May 1 - The Empire State Building officially opened in 1931.
Walter E. Disney receives patent #2,201,689 from the US
Patent and Trademark Office for the "art of animation"
camera. This multiplane camera allowed for a more
realistic, three-dimensional image as well as adding
depth and richness to the animation.
May 2 - The Scottish newspaper Inverness Courier reported a
sighting of the “Loch Ness Monster” in 1933, beginning
a media and tourist frenzy.
May 3 - Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Fletcher and Lieutenant Colonel
William Benedict piloted the first plane to land at the
North Pole in 1952.
May 4 - A storm system of an estimated 76 tornadoes hit the
Midwest on this day in 1999, killing 44 people.
May 5 - Carnegie Hall officially opens in New York City in 1891.
Cinco de Mayo is celebrated.
May 6 - Baseball player Willie Howard Mays Jr. was born in 1931.
Johannes Brahms is born in Hamburg, Germany in 1833
May 7 - The American Medical Association was founded in 1847.
Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky is born in Vitkinsk, Russia in
1840.
May 8 - Militant members of the American Indian Movement, who had
occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, for 70
days, surrendered to federal officials in 1973.
May 9 - President Wilson proclaimed the first national Mother’s
Day in 1914.
May 10 - A ceremony marked the completion of the first
transcontinental railroad in the United States in 1869.
May 11 - The first coins of Europe’s single currency, the euro,
were produced in 1998.
May 12 - Poet Edward Lear was born in 1812.
May 13 - Mathematician Lazare Nicolas Marguérite Carnot was born
in 1753.
May 14 - Lewis and Clark began their famous expedition to
explore the American West in 1803.
May 15 - U.S. airmail began service in 1918.
May 16 - Congress voted to issue the five-cent nickel in 1866.
May 17 - Sue, the largest, most complete and best-preserved
Tyrannosaurus rex fossil found to date, went on display
at the Field Museum in Chicago in 2000.
May 18 - Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980.
May 19 - The U.S. Congress passed the Quota Act, which
established national quotas for immigrants, in 1921.
May 20 - President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act in
1862.
May 21 - Pioneering fossil collector Mary Anning was born in
1799.
May 22 - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes
mysteries, was born in 1859.
May 23 - Captain William Kidd was hanged for piracy in 1701.
May 24 - The Brooklyn Bridge was opened to traffic in 1883.
Bob Dylan is born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941
May 25 - Congress passed the first copyright law in 1790.
May 26 - The treaty resulting from the Strategic Arms Limitation
Talks (SALT I) was signed by the United States and the
Soviet Union in 1972.
May 27 - Industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt was born in 1794.
May 28 - Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, fell to forces of
the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front in
1991.
May 29 - Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a
Sherpa of Nepal, became the first explorers to reach
the summit of Mount Everest in 1953.
May 30 - Mariner 9 departed for Mars in 1971.
May 31 - Physicist Chien-Shiung Wu was born in 1912.
